Tax & Legal

With the extension of the tax return deadlines for the 2019 tax period, the legislator took into account the difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic. However, if taxpayers missed these deadlines as well late filing penalties had to be imposed. There was no room to exercise discretion, the Supreme Tax Court said in a most recently published decision.

Where an appeal is submitted by email, failure to request confirmation that the message was received and read has no impact on the cause of fault. This was decided by the Supreme Tax Court regarding the consequences of missing the one-month filing deadline in the course of an application for reinstatement into the status quo ante pursuant to Section 110 Fiscal Code.

In a recent judgement, the Supreme Tax Court held that the only legitimate type of action for the judicial claim under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the provision of a copy of the processed personal data is by way of „appeal for mandatory relief" (Verpflichtungsklage). The filing deadline is one month commencing with the delivery of the challenged administrative act.

On 31 March 2022, the German Federal Ministry of Finance (MoF) published a circular on the further extension of the tax declaration deadlines for the 2020 period of assessment by the Fourth Corona Tax Assistance Act.

On 25 June 2021, the Bundesrat approved the extension of the filing deadline for the 2020 tax return by three months.